The Spring conference round-up

In the first batch of the spring party conferences, future political strategy and the question of a constitutional referendum unsurprisingly permeated the speeches of both Iain Gray, leader of the Labour Party in Scotland, and Tavish Scott, leader of the Scottish Liberal Democrats.

In his first conference speech as leader of the Labour Party in Scotland, Iain Gray called for a need for revision, a rediscovery of the founding principles of the Labour party and tacitly conceded that Labour had made mistakes in Scotland. The leader stressed the need for Labour to “learn the lessons in Scotland…regroup, recover and reinvigorate the Scottish Labour passion”. Mr Gray’s speech made clear his aspirations to position his party as a credible counterweight to the SNP – something which they did not have to do in their first two sessions in power and, quite spectacularly, failed to do under the leadership of Wendy Alexander.

Central to Gray’s speech was the charge that the SNP had failed to make good on their manifesto pledges. Mr Gray continued in his criticism of the SNP’s recent abandonment of the local income tax, condemning the aborted policy as: “not local; not fair; not workable; not happening.”

But in spite of this derision, Mr Gray’s speech offered voters no viable alternative to the SNP’s waived local income tax policy. If the previous council-tax reform proposals of the Labour Party in Scotland were, in Gray’s words, drawn up “on the back of a fag packet”, they are now conspicuously absent.

On another of the SNP’s flagship policies, the constitutional referendum—arguably the raison d’etre of the party—Iain Gray continued in his vociferous opposition. He stressed that the Labour Party in Scotland under Wendy Alexander’s leadership afforded the SNP the opportunity for a referendum on the independence of Scotland but that Alex Salmond had “lost his nerve”. Iain Gray urged Salmond, under the current economic conditions, to drop the constitutional referendum.

In the same vein, Tavish Scott opposed the referendum bill, again in light of the recession, as a waste of parliamentary time and taxpayers’ money “on a cause that the country doesn’t want and the economy can’t bear”.

Scott’s confidence in the public’s opposition to a referendum bill under current economic conditions is both well-placed and timely, and his speech was well-received. On the weekend of the Scottish Lib Dem conference, YouGov figures indicated that only 32 per cent of Scots believe that it would not be appropriate to hold a referendum next year, under the current economic conditions.

Perhaps less well founded was Scott’s assertion that the time for the Liberal Democrats had arrived: “This is our time, a liberal time”, Mr Scott claimed with conviction. However, if the figures are anything to go by “a liberal time” seems unlikely to say the least in the near future. YouGov figures had the Scottish Liberal Democrats on a mere 14 per cent of the Scottish vote. The "time" for the Liberal Democrats, it would seem, could thus only realistically be achieved through a power-sharing agreement with another party; perhaps the SNP. Indeed, in an instructive webcast with BBC Scotland’s political editor, Brian Taylor, during the conference weekend, Scott indicated that he would not rule out the possibility of a coalition with the SNP or the support of an independence referendum in the future.

Almost half-way through the third session of the Scottish Parliament, both parties have clearly had to come to grips with the realities of not being in government and a truly changed political landscape in Scotland. Both conferences have been revealing in this regard. For Scott, the realisation of this has lead to an ostensibly more conciliatory approach, sounding out the opportunities for a prospective coalition with the SNP, and for Gray this has signalled that the Labour Party in Scotland, in opposition, must present itself as a tenable alternative to the SNP. In both cases, Scott and Gray will have to offer more to voters than simply not being the SNP.